An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Youth de­vel­op­ment is im­por­tant, and the Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment Fos­ter Cum­mings has as­sured that of­fer­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties is one way of keep­ing young peo­ple out of a life of crime.

Fos­ter made the com­ment at his min­istry’s launch of the Mi­cro and Small Busi­ness (MSB) Grant Scheme at the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO) head of­fice in the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board build­ing Port of Spain yes­ter­day.

“If we get our young peo­ple in­volved in more pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ty and cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for them and get them off the street and get them in­volved in train­ing pro­grammes and equip them for them for the place of work in busi­ness you think we will have less of them on the street avail­able to those in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties to re­cruit them, and that is what we are do­ing,” Cum­mings said.

He al­so laud­ed en­ti­ties like NED­CO, which is al­so pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to small busi­ness­es, as he said to date al­most 4,000 grants have been giv­en to var­i­ous busi­ness­es.

Speak­ing about the MSB grant scheme NED­CO’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Calvin Mau­rice said this new ini­tia­tive sup­ports en­tre­pre­neurs at two ear­ly stages of their busi­ness life cy­cle: ideation and busi­ness start-up ini­ti­a­tion.

Mau­rice out­lined that the grant en­com­pass­es all of NED­CO’s ser­vices – fi­nan­cial, train­ing, busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry, men­tor­ship, and cus­tomized ser­vices – to pro­vide holis­tic cov­er­age to its re­cip­i­ents.

“A key fo­cus of the MSB grant is our youth, with 60 per cent of the re­cip­i­ents be­ing young en­tre­pre­neurs.

This grant pro­gramme is an in­ter­ven­tion to sup­port this be­lief. We an­tic­i­pate that in the next five to ten years, we will wit­ness a trans­for­ma­tion in the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem, with a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in young peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly start­ing and sus­tain­ing busi­ness­es,” he de­tailed.

He not­ed that the grant is al­so open to per­sons over 35 years of age, en­sur­ing in­clu­siv­i­ty.

In line with the dig­i­tal era, Mau­rice high­light­ed that NED­CO is evolv­ing dig­i­tal­ly to reach po­ten­tial clients through so­cial me­dia, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, web­site en­gage­ment and an on­line-on­ly ap­pli­ca­tion process for the MSB grant.

“This ap­proach is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for our tar­get mar­ket of young en­tre­pre­neurs. NED­CO’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, tar­get­ing our youth, has been yield­ing suc­cess with 2,801 young per­sons be­low the age of 35 years ap­ply­ing for our loans since June 2022 (1,543 were fe­males and 1,258 were males),” he men­tioned.

And, NED­CO’s chair­man Clar­ry Benn said with the pro­gramme suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants can ac­cess up to $20,000 and will have to un­der­go a manda­to­ry com­pre­hen­sive 15-day train­ing and skill-de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme which will pro­vide the grant par­tic­i­pants with an im­proved op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly launch and sus­tain their new busi­ness­es.

"The grant is ac­ces­si­ble to cit­i­zens and le­gal res­i­dents over the age of 18 years who have a busi­ness idea; a start-up; or an ex­ist­ing busi­ness (op­er­a­tional for less than 18 months); an an­nu­al turnover of less than $250,000 over the last 12 months (for an ex­ist­ing busi­ness); or the fore­cast­ed turnover for the first year of op­er­a­tion must be less than TT$250,000 (if the busi­ness is not yet in op­er­a­tion)," Mau­rice added.